


Winter, Widow, Soldier, Spy

by vanillafluffy



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Caper Fic, Espionage, F/M, Fights, Gen, Mission Fic, Missions Gone Wrong, Quote: I've got red in my ledger; I'd like to wipe it out., Rescue Missions, Spy Natasha Romanov, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, fight to the death, winterwidow - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 13:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18223898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: The prompt was, "The difference between soldiers and spies".Bucky and Natasha are tasked with recovering a would-be whistle-blower being detained in the Russian embassy in Bucharest--without creating an international incident. The first part isn't easy--but it's the second part that may be their undoing!Bucky and Natasha are a canon couple in the comics, although this is only obliquely referenced in the films. Here, it's more like subtext; nothing explicitly happens.





	Winter, Widow, Soldier, Spy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Daria234](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Daria234).



They make a good team. Natasha has been trained since a very young age to be stealthy and full of guile and subterfuge. Her reflexes and agility are superior and she excels at hand-to-hand combat. Much of what she knows, she learned from Bucky, who in another lifetime, trained the Red Room’s pretty little killers. 

Able to brawl his way though a squad of ordinary soldiers without breaking a sweat, he prefers offense to defense. He leaves skulking around in the shadows to Natasha. Let her disable a building’s alarms; he’d just as soon rip the door off its hinges and be done with it. Maybe it’s riskier, but he likes the direct approach. So he’ll probably have to go through a response team on the way out. So? That’s their bad luck.

“That’s not going to work here,” she tells him when he says as much. “One, we’re trying to get a person out of the Russian embassy in Bucharest--alive and in one piece--it isn’t like we can tuck her into our pockets like a USB drive and make a break for it. Two, we’re trying to avoid creating an international incident, so we need to be subtle.”

“I hate subtle,” Bucky grumbles. “All this diplomatic bullshit….”

“Do you really want to call attention to yourself? You got a Presidential pardon once; if you’re caught and accused of what could be construed as an act of terrorism again, people may start to think where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

“Fine. We’ll do it your way, then.”

“Don’t worry,” Natasha aims a sunny smile at him. “It’ll be fun.”

“You have a really strange idea of fun,” he tells her as they depart the safe house in Bucharest a few days later. “I look like a Vegas pit boss in this stupid suit.”

“Nonsense! You look very nice…although you’d look better if you had a haircut.”

Bucky hisses under his breath. “My hair is my business. Nobody notices waiters anyway,” he mutters. “Even if I was cooking, I’d only have to wear a hairnet. You’re just jealous because my hair is longer than yours.”

“Oh, please!” Natasha smooths the skirt of her black silk dress. “I just think it’s unprofessional.”

They’ve already done all the prep--studied maps and blueprints of their target, rehearsed plans and back-up plans. There are no details left to iron out, so the two bicker amiably on the drive across town. To them, the successful completion of their mission is a foregone conclusion; neither of them is nervous. Their banter simply fills in the silence.

“Knock ‘em dead, Red,” Bucky says in parting as he prepares to enter the embassy function as a server.

“Mind your manners and don’t spill any soup.”

Bucky smiles, but by the time he reaches the service entrance at the embassy, his usual mask is in place. He’s spent enough time in Eastern Europe to know how to pass. ‘Friendly’ is suspicious, right off the bat. No one here is going to expect the kind of instant bonhomie they do in American--thank god. What comes off as ‘surly bastard’ across the pond is more of less standard good manners here.

The kitchen is bedlam; the chef is bellowing at his assistants, who are scurrying everywhere. Steam rises from several vats on the stoves, something in the oven is twenty seconds away from burning and the smell of cooked cabbage gives him an odd pang of nostalgia for his mother’s colcannon.

“Check that oven,” he says in passing to one of the junior assistants.

There are trays of soup ready to go…he hovers until he sees more servers returning by way of the service corridor from the dining room, then claims a tray and joins the ballet of taking the next course out to the guests. He worked in enough restaurants before the war that carrying a tray is nothing new for him. He doesn’t stand out from the other servers, thanks to the cloaking technology in his prosthesis--which also provides a less notorious face. One of the other waiters sports a man-bun, and two of them have more stubble than he does, so he’s confident in being able to blend.

His target is at the long dining table, he’s relieved to see. Beginning at the corner nearest the man, it takes just a little slight of hand to ‘garnish’ the soup with a dose of something green that will put him out of action. He’s careful not to make eye contact with Natasha, who is partnered with a junior diplomat on the other side of the table.

Returning to the kitchen, he exercises another feat of subterfuge to drop a slightly bigger hit of the green herb-like drug into one of the big kettles full of carrots. Knock out the bigwig first, then a delayed reaction and more guests will start to fall ill. Not his usual style, but it will help thin out the crowd, making it easier for him and Natasha to maneuver. He and she have both had the antidote to the additive, so whatever happens with the other diners won’t happen to them.

“You there!” someone says to him. He turns a calm gaze on the speaker, wondering if he’s about to be called out as an imposter--maybe things are about to get interesting. “Take this out to the table! The ambassador’s wife wants them.” The sous-chef hands him a platter of lemon wedges.

His briefing came complete with pictures of embassy personnel, including spouses. He nods silently, heading back out to the dining room. Wordlessly, he sets the dish on the table near the hostess, and is about to leave when General Nabokov says, “I feel unwell.”

The man looks green around the gills--of course, he _did_ get a concentrated dose of that stuff--more so than the other diners.

“You there!” What is that, his new name? “Take the general upstairs to one of the retiring rooms.”

“Certainly, Mr. Ambassador. This way, General….”

Bucky escorts the general toward the stairs. Shot in the ass with luck, he thinks, marveling. The original plan called for him to be downstairs running interference for Natasha. She’ll be stuck at the dinner table until the others start falling ill. Then, presumably, the survivors will move to one of the reception rooms and she’ll slip away to find the general and ask them where their quarry is.

Meanwhile, here he is, Bucky-on-the-spot. He’s perfectly capable of interrogating one queasy general; with a little continued luck, he can get the information they need, go spring the individual in question and be out of their while Tasha’s still waiting for the dining room to clear.

He parks the general on a couch in a second floor receiving room. By this time, Nabokov is ghastly pale. Bucky thoughtfully provides a trashcan in case the man spews, pats his shoulder and asks, “Where is Vassilia Turlievsky?” He knows his Romanian comes out with a strong Russian accent--he’d learned it in Moscow…in the late ‘40’s or early ‘50’s, nearly as he recall--but the general is out of it enough that the familiar accent apparently reassures him.

“The blue room on the fourth floor,” Nabokov mutters in Russian. “She is not being cooperative.”

“Give me the key.”

The general fumbles a key-card out of his inner vest pocket, starts to hand it to Bucky, then bends forward and ralphs into the can.

Bucky catches the card. “I’ll take care of her,” he says cheerfully.

“Take care of who?” the befuddled general asks. “I don’t…I really don’t….” His head lolls back against the couch, and Bucky’s lips twitch. Just to be on the safe side, he pulls out what looks like a tube of breath spray, and spritzes Nabokov with it--the anesthetic should buy him a little extra time, although he probably won’t need it.

He trots up to the fourth floor. There’s a guard at the head of the stairs who wants to know where the hell he thinks he’s going?

“General Nabokov asked me to look in on his guest,” Bucky replies, holding up the key-card.

“Hold it right there--I don’t know you.” The guard draws his gun…very predictable.

Bucky seizes the muzzle with his left hand and squeezes, putting a crimp in the barrel. For a second, the guard stares at the damaged weapon, then back at him. His eyes widen as he obviously realizes only the Winter Soldier could do such a thing bare-handed.

He drops the gun, turns to flee, runs headlong into the door-frame and knocks himself out cold.

Bucky laughs quietly as the man sprawls to the carpet. Natasha was right: This is kinda fun. The guy’s probably going to have at least one black eye from that crack on the head--and all with zero effort on Bucky’s part. A quick puff of anesthetic spray to ensure the unconscious man stays out, and he’s free to find Vassilia Turlievsky.

 

Downstairs in the dining room, Natasha carries on a bright, vapid conversation with the young man she’s been partnered with. She has a feeling that things are about to go off the rails. Bucky taking the general away--albeit at the ambassador’s request--was not part of the plan. And she knows, as clearly as if it was printed in 200-point type, that he’s not going to wait for her to do her thing. No, he’s going to go after Turlievsky himself. 

The dinner course arrives…although she watches carefully, this time the servers don’t include Bucky--which doesn’t surprise her, but damn it why couldn’t he have gone back to the kitchen after his errand and left Nabokov to her?

One of the embassy wives excuses herself midway through the meal, then another. Natasha’s companion has gotten quiet, looking rather pale. Although they’re soon down by several guests, the ambassador is apparently not going to cut dinner short for anything less than a plague. 

Natasha briefly considers feigning illness, but decides not to call attention to herself. It isn’t until one of the visiting dignitaries is sick in the middle of the sweet course that they’re finally guided into one of the big downstairs reception rooms. In the ensuing milling about, because most of the party decides to use the facilities while they’re at it, Natasha slips into a handy service corridor.

What would Bucky do? she wonders. Turlievsky is most likely being held on the fourth floor. Their original plan called for Bucky to be outside at ground level, so that Natasha could send the woman down to him by way of a zip-line. Then she’d go back downstairs, mingle with the remaining guests, and leave the normal way. Of course, as far as he knows, she’s still at dinner, so he’ll probably try to get the woman out by himself. 

Mentally reviewing the blueprints, she recalls the elevator that goes to the basement, where there’s also an access at street level. Count on it, that’s where he’s headed. 

What are you doing here?” one of the embassy staff demands.

“The loo--which way is the loo?” She puts as much panic into her tone as she can, and from the expression on his face, she guesses he’s aware that guests have already been taken ill.

“This way, Madame--” He leads her back the way she came, to a discrete door. She enters rapidly and feigns sounds of distress that he can surely hear, if he’s still lurking.

Although she isn’t sick, there’s a lingering reek of vomit in the powder room. Fastidiously, she sprays a few pumps of the perfume from her clutch to mask it--the neuro-toxin is liable to knock out the next occupant, or at least make them a little dizzier. 

When she emerges, she’s giving her best impression of a woman trying to be polite despite having just lost her dinner. No one urges her to stay--most of them look as if they’re on the verge of sicking up as well. Natasha exits the embassy, totters up the road--as soon as she’s out of sight, she retrieves the car, changes the settings on her facial cloaking program and heads toward the far side of the embassy where the street-level access is.

As she surmised, it’s padlocked from the outside. Probably Mr. Direct Approach didn’t even stop to consider that, just figured he’d rip the darn thing off its hinges. Y’know, being subtle….

Picking the lock takes her a short minute. Now all she has to do is wait--and hope that her partner isn’t screwing things up.

 

On the fourth floor, Bucky has taken the fallen guard’s gun. Not that he needs a gun; it’s mostly as a prop, because Tasha was right, he doesn’t want to set off an international incident. Leaving it would point toward who trashed it--advertising the arm is the surest way to get himself in trouble.. 

There are several windowless rooms up here, according to the blueprints he’s seen. Those are the likeliest spots for them to have Turlievsky stashed. The first one he checks is set up with a table and chairs--interrogation room, conference room--no frills, whichever it is. He opens the door to the second room, and before he can turn on the lights, something strikes him in the stomach. He takes half a step back, and a figure launches itself at him.

The blow isn’t hard enough to really hurt; he grabs the object and yanks. It’s a piece of wood, like a bed slat, maybe?

The woman wielding it is fifty-something in the light of the hallway, light brown hair streaked silver. Bruises suggest she’s been slapped around, but he recognizes Turlievsky from the pictures he’s seen.

“Excuse me, Vassilia,” he says, politely as he can under the circumstances. “I’m here to get you out.”

Vassilia Turlievsky pauses, eyes darting around the hallway. She focuses on the fallen guard, then studies Bucky for a moment. “Why?” Ah, the usual Eastern European paranoia--ridiculous to say he’s missed it, but it’s familiar. He understands it.

“You have information on certain corrupt individuals. People I work with would appreciate it if you could share what you know.”

“And then what? You’ll kill me?”

“That would be terribly ungrateful,” he says, aware that the clock is ticking. “We can arrange to have you relocated, to give you a new life. We need to hurry, though. Come with me, please….”

She hesitates, but at least she’s out of the room--he can tell from the way she avoids even looking at the door that she has no desire to go back inside--but he’s under to illusion that she trusts him. At this point, it’s less a matter of her being cooperative than her going along with the opportunity. Trying to elude him as soon as she can is next on her agenda, count on it.

The elevator is unoccupied, the ride to the basement uneventful.

Fortunately he’s held on to Nabokov’s key-card--there’s a sort of foyer between the street access and the cellar that _wasn’t_ indicated on the plans--and in a moment, he’s opening the metal hatch that leads to freedom.

Natasha is leaning against the car. “Hey, soldier,” she greets him. “Ah, Sera Turlievsky, it’s good to see you. Right this way--” She opens the car door. After a slight hesitation, their mission gets in.

Bucky shuts the cellar door, and as the hatch closes, a siren goes off.

“Get in!” Natasha snaps at him, dashing around to the driver’s side. He does. They take off with a squeal of tires. “That close,” she says bitterly. “We were that damn close to walking out without anyone the wiser--”

“They probably found the guard…hey, he knocked himself out when he realized who I was.”

“What did you do, turn off your cloaking device?”

“Nah, I kind of put a crimp in his gun barrel.”

“You idiot--when they see that, they’ll know it was you.”

“Guess it’s a good thing I brought it with me, then.”

Natasha’s lips are moving silently…she’s probably cussing him out in three or four different languages. Tough. It’s done.

“Who the hell are you people?” Turlievsky demands. “Albanian? Bulgarian? What? You--” she fixes a gimlet-eyes stare on Bucky. “You _sound_ Russian, but you’re too polite--”

“I beg your pardon?” Natasha is offended, and for a moment, Bucky sits back while the women bicker about the characteristics of a true Russian. Turlievsky, a Romanian national, is not a fan.

A few blocks later, he interrupts. “Ladies, as fascinating as this socio-political discourse is, I’d like to point out that the vehicle behind us has diplomatic plates, and that’s probably not a coincidence.”

Natasha mutters something extremely vulgar in Italian and stomps on the gas. “Sera Turlievsky, I’m Natalie, he’s Jimmy. It’s lovely to meet you. The rest can wait until we’ve gotten rid of these idiots.” A sideways glance at Bucky. “Too bad we don’t have a gun that works.”

“Too bad somebody wanted to be subtle,” he retorts cheerfully. “Take a right here.”

She spins the steering wheel and they skid down the street he indicated. “Why?” 

“Yup, they’re definitely following us. Bear left around the traffic circle coming up--we’ll be parallel to the Dambovita River, I can pitch the gun--just in case.”

“In case what? I decide to beat you to death with it?”

Bucky can’t help smiling. This is the best of both worlds--being in comfortable surroundings, doing what he’s good at--but without HYDRA torturing him. Knowing that the world actually will be a better place, unlike Pierce’s bullshit about his assassinations being a gift to humanity. Vassilia’s information on the collusion between the Russians and various members of Romanian security will directly benefit a lot of citizens who may not even realize how precarious their continued existance is.

“When I stop the car, be ready to throw the damn thing.”

“Why do you have to stop the car for that?”

“Because if I don’t, with our luck, it’ll bounce off a light-post and literally drop right into their laps.”

“Fine.” The car screeches to a stop, he opens his door and climbs out. Then he turns to look at the car that’s skidded to a stop behind them.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get back in here!”

“Take a lap around the block,” he suggests. “I’ll take care of this. Go on, I’ll be fine.”

He saunters toward the car as she takes off. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he says as he steps up to the driver’s side, hands spread to show he’s not holding a weapon. The guy has a gun on him, and so does his passenger. “I seem to be lost. Which way to the Anthenaeum?”

One of the more subtle defenses he has is a fingernail that’s basically a switchblade. Unless someone looks closely, they aren’t going to notice the razor-edged crescent--and since they’re illuminated only by street lights, he looks perfectly innocent, a well-dressed tourist who speaks the language. A flick of that fingernail, and the left front tire bursts with a loud report. The car jolts.

Taking advantage of the moment of surprise, Bucky snatches the driver’s gun and aims it at his passenger. “Roll down your window, and throw your gun away.”

The man complies. Bucky pitches the driver’s gun over the car, beyond the sidewalk and into the river, where it lands with a splash. 

The passenger starts to open his door. Bucky pulls out the other gun, the one taken from the hapless guard and shakes his head. “Not a good idea, pal.”

The car door closes again. Both men glare at him. They can’t see the kink in the barrel that renders the weapon useless; while he has them immobilized, he strolls toward the back of the car. Pops another tire. Circles around, flattening the other back tire and snagging the third gun while he’s at it. That one and the guard’s gun join the driver’s gun in the Dambovita.

Their pursuers think this is their golden opportunity. They jump out of the car, ready to take on the crazy man who’s standing there unarmed. 

There are only two of them. They aren’t bad, per se, but it’s not much of a workout. He toys with them until Natasha pulls up and hollers, “Are you coming or aren’t you?”

“Thanks for your time, fellows,” he says and bangs both their heads together. He slides back into the car. “Hello, ladies--did you miss me?”

Natasha calls him a lunatic. Vassilia Turlievsky glares at him. “You’re American!” she accuses him.

“What gave it away?”

“You’re crazy!” Her face alters into what passes as a smile. “And you have excellent teeth.”

Bucky laughs. The car has departed the riverside promenade, heading obliquely toward the American embassy. “Vassilia, you’re right. I _am_ American--and possibly a little crazy. With a very few exceptions, I’m not too fond of the Russians, either. They have a bad habit of trying to interfere with democracy. Help us fix that here.”

“I spent years trying to restore freedom to my country.” Turlievsky states grimly. Her file documents a long career in various government ministries dating back more than thirty years. Outwardly loyal, she’s survived various changes of regime. “After the revolution, I thought my countrymen would be happy, that we would finally enjoy the fruits of liberty…but too many of them want to profit from the rest of us. They give _them_ our industrial secrets, launder their money--worst of all, they give them people like me who want to expose their corruption. I’ll help you--but I don’t want to be relocated. This is my country--this is where I belong.”

“What have you got for me?” Natasha asks--not him, she’s getting traffic on her earpiece-- “Thanks, Coulson. We’ll take an alternate route.”

“Alternate route to where?”

“We’re compromised,” she tells him grimly. “Satellite feed has multiple bogeys between us and the embassy. We need to get her in there without attracting attention. Do you think you can do that?”

Bucky snorts. “What’s your plan, O Stealthy One?”

“I’m thinking of the annex--what if you took her across on the zip-line while I’m causing a distraction elsewhere?”

“Wait a minute--when we were going to do it at the embassy, I was going to be on the ground--”

“Zip line?” Turlievsky repeats loudly. “Me?”

“Problem with heights?” Natasha asks, as if she’s known all along that this would be a tough sell. “Which is worse, the height, or our pursuers?”

“You misunderstand me,” Turlievsky replies with dignity. “I’ve always thought zip-lining looked like fun--I never expected the opportunity to experience it.” She favors Bucky with another of those pinched smiles. “I’m sure that we can manage admirably, can’t we, Jimmy?”

No one has called him Jimmy since his sisters (circa 1943), but Bucky smiles back. “We’ve got this. You’re taking about going over from the church?”

“No, the church is too far. We only have sixty feet of line--there’s a limit to how much they could fit into an evening bag. I was thinking that grocery store, the one with the billboard on the roof. You could make it over to the roof of the annex and secure the zip-line for our friend.”

Bucky stares at his partner. “Are you out of your blue-eyed mind?” he asks incredulously. “That’s at least a thirty-foot jump. And the roof of the grocery is lower than the annex--I’m good, I can handle the thirty feet over, but that plus at least ten feet _up_? Not gonna happen. I’d need a bloody catapult!”

“That billboard is well over ten feet tall.”

He covers his face with his hands. “You expect me to run along the top of the billboard and jump over to the annex? Is that your plan?”

“I’d do it myself, but I don’t trust you to distract our enemies without giving yourself away.”

A lot is going to depend on how well-made that billboard is. If it’s not sturdy enough, they’re screwed. He’ll need a back-up plan…the only thing that comes to mind is the sewers, and in addition to being blocked by the embassy, those are probably being patrolled by the other side. If they’ve blanketed the streets around the embassy, dollars to donuts they have underground security active as well. He’s got to make the roof-top flight work. 

“We’ll need to ditch the car…I’ll drop you two near Victory Avenue, you _should_ be able to make it three blocks without attracting attention.” Her tone evidences skepticism, which he chooses to ignore. “I’ll go north, dump the car on the far side of your position and work my way over to the embassy, creating as much chaos as I can.”

“That’s a lot of chaos.” It’s one of the most hare-brained plans he’s ever heard, but he’s kind of looking forward to trying it. Turlievsky is right; he’s nuts.

“Okay, Vassilia,” he says, once they’re on the ground. “Let’s go knock over a grocery store.”

 

Natasha watches them go, more than a little apprehensive. It isn’t that she doesn’t trust Bucky; he’s one of a very short list of operatives she’ll willingly work with because he’s got mad skills, even if he is a little on the impulsive side. Turlievsky, on the other hand…the trouble is, the woman reminds her far too much of one of her old instructors in the Red Room, dour and prone to throwing her weight around. Bucky seems to have connected with her; under the circumstance, it makes more sense that he should be the one to shepherd her in. If only she doesn’t make a break for it….

She detours well around the American embassy before leaving the car a quarter-mile on the far side. If the grocery near the annex is at three o’clock, relative position, the car is at eight o’clock, and she’d gone counterclockwise, giving them a little more time to get into position.

Does she trust Turlievsky? Damn it, that’s the trouble with this part of the world--contagious paranoia. Natasha’s brows wrinkle. True, the woman’s dossier bears out the sentiments she’d expressed in that speech about working to free her country. But will she give them the details about the double-dealing officials, or is she aiming to get rough justice from the network of patriots they know operates here? Again, it’s difficult to know who’s on the up-and-up….

A car ahead…with diplomatic plates. Really, _could_ they be more obvious? One of them is leaning against the right front fender, the other is in the driver’s seat.

Affecting a drunken stumble, she sways down the sidewalk in plain sight, singing a bawdy French song. She’s wearing a low-cut silk dress, stiletto heels and appears tipsy--if that’s not enough to distract these dumbasses from their duties, what is?

“Pardon, monsieur, I’ve lost my bag, can you spare me a few Euros for the Metro?” She favors him with a coy smile. “Which way _is_ the Metro from here?”

Maybe he doesn’t speak French, but he thinks he knows a pigeon when he sees it. “Poor little lost lamb,” he says in Russian. He puts his hands on her hips, leaving himself wide open.

Natasha giggles, as if she’s going along with his advances. From this angle, the driver can’t see what’s going on, isn’t aware his partner as crumpled to the pavement. “Monsieur, where are my panties?” she asks loudly.

The car door opens. Nat smiles and crouches beside the first sentry. When his partner comes around the car, she springs at him.

It’s a nice, big car--they both fit comfortably into the trunk, sans wallets to make it look like a robbery. On to the next watchers….

 

Bucky fumes. One, there’s no fire escape outside the grocery building. The only access to the roof is from inside the store. Two, it’s earlier than he thought, because the goddamn store is still open. It’s a modern market, something called Cora--big, brightly-lit and not his idea of an ideal target.

“What are we going to do?” Turlievsky is a lot less straight-laced than he’d thought at first. She actually seems to relish the challenge facing them.

“Good question. I thought the store would be closed, and we’d be able to break in, get to the roof and do our thing. We’re trying not to attract attention to who got you away from the Russians, you see.”

She nods. “So it’s a question of you finding how to get us up to the roof, isn’t it? I have an idea….”

Vassilia Turlievsky has a knack for this sort of thing; it’s a peach of an idea, and what’s more, Bucky thinks, it’ll probably work.

They enter the store separately, several minutes apart. By the time she comes in, Bucky has browsed his way to the far end and is starting to get a little nervous--if he’s wrong about her and she’s looking for a chance to get away from him, he’s just handed her the perfect opening. 

Vassilia makes her grand entrance, wailing about her awful husband beating her. Hopefully, the store personnel will see her bruises and not think in terms of how fresh they are. While all eyes are on her, Bucky abandons scrutiny of the nearby cleaning products and ducks into the back of the store. On his way to the stairs, he also locates the fuse box, which is bound to be helpful. Taking the steps two at a time, he bolts for the roof.

The billboard is big, with lights above it, which means a reinforced frame. Clambering up the ladder, he’s relieved--there’s a foot-wide platform above the sign allowing maintenance on the lights or changing the advertised product. If it had been mounted to something four inches wide, he might’ve managed it, but Turlievsky would’ve had have trouble. It’s not flimsy construction, either, which is reassuring, since either he or Turlievsky weighs in at around two hundred pounds.

Quickly, he pulls Natasha’s evening bag from under his suit jacket. He secures the zip-line to an upright pole at the end of the platform nearest the annex--it’s going to be a helluva broad-jump!--he’ll loop it around himself when he jumps and see if he can secure it somewhere on the other side once he’s across. He’s dubious about the idea of hauling her over without something more than himself as an anchor, especially if she panics. There’s a likely-looking vent coming up from the roof. They can use his belt to improve a sling to go around Vassilia--not going to risk that she can hold on--and get her to safety. It’ll work. It has to.

He hurries back down the stairs to the back room where Vassilia is waiting. She’s familiar with this chain of stores and said she’d go to the restroom after milking her histrionics for all they were worth. He blocks the double doors that lead to the main part of the store, then shows her the stairs and tells her to keep climbing, even after the lights go out. “To maximize confusion,” he tells her.

A built-in flashlight--it’s in his palm--guides him to the stairs in the dark. There’s yelling and swearing out front, which he ignores, just follows Turlievsky up to the roof.

“Great,” he says, trying to project confidence, because the woman looks a bit dismayed. “Here we are…here’s my belt, make sure the buckle is the part resting against the zip-line, or it’s liable to slice through the leather. That would be bad.”

“Is there no other way, Jimmy?”

“At this point, no. Don’t worry, we can do this. Wait at the far end of the platform until I’m over. I’m going to need a running start.”

“It’s impossible!” she insists, catching his arm and looking at the gulf between them and the embassy annex. “You’ll be killed!”

“The world’s record for long jump is twenty-nine feet,” he informs her. “It isn’t impossible.” He doesn’t mention that the record has stood for upwards of fifty years, choosing to concentrate on the fact that it was set by an unenhanced human. If they could do it, he can do it.

“What should I do if you fall?” she wants to know.

Bucky envisions himself pancaking into the asphalt of the street below like that crazy cartoon coyote. It’s only about twenty feet down, not enough to kill him unless he’s spectacularly unlucky. He could probably climb the zip-line back up to the platform and try again. “Don’t panic. I’ll be fine.”

She’s muttering again about how crazy he is…he’s becoming rather fond of her; it’s been ages since he had a curmudgeonly aunt to deal with.

There have been plenty of times he’s had to do this kind of thing on the run without the luxury of a moment to stretch and flex and focus. The trick to navigating a narrow ledge like this at speed is to keep his eyes fixed on exactly where he’s going and running in a straight line, _not_ looking down at the width of the surface he’s running on. Fortunately, he has that upright pole as a reference point for when to jump. 

The zip-line is secured around him. Bucky’s taken care that it won’t snag on anything. “Remember, buckle against the wire,” he says to Vassilia as he begins to run. His gaze is locked onto the exact point of the annex roof-line that he wants to attain. Reaching the end of the platform, he leaps out into space….

 

Natasha would be only too happy to play the ditsy French girl again, but there’s no one in this car to perform for. It’s sitting there, two blocks from the American embassy, engine running…she toys with the idea of getting into it and driving off, leaving its occupants to chase her, but her intuition says not to. She respects that inner voice; it’s saved her life countless times. It does so now.

Something alerts her. Nothing so obvious as sound or reflection, more like a change in shadows, in the air pressure, perhaps. Natasha turns swiftly. Standing some ten feet away is a woman who greets her with, “Hello, Natasha. How lovely to see you again. I don’t know what you’ve done to your face, but I recognize your walk.”

Lovely isn’t the word she’d use. Whereas she was christened Black Widow, the Red Room’s senior graduate standing in front of her was known as Asp, after the venomous snake that killed Cleopatra. Natasha doesn’t know what her original name had been--they weren’t contemporaries; she’d been a working operative for years while Natasha was still in training--but she remembers her motto, “Beauty dies, but deadly is forever.”

Another of her instructors’s oft repeated maxims comes to her: ‘Age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.’ Will it? Or was that another tool used to keep them in fear of their trainers? 

“What brings you to Bucharest?” Asp esquires lightly.

Natasha matches her breezy tone. “I heard the National Opera House was stagine _Aida_. I’ve always been fond of that story.”

“As I recall, you were a better dancer than a singer,” Asp comments, drifting to her right. “Yes, that’s right…you danced, although I believe you were reprimanded for getting too close to your instructor.”

Asp seems pleased with herself for dredging up that old transgression. No, the Red Room personnel hadn’t been at all pleased that she’d developed an attachment to Bucky. Of course, in those days, the age gap was a lot wider…but Bucky’s repeated interludes in cryostasis have evened the score. Now they’re fairly close in age…close in many ways that would undoubtedly piss off her former instructors. Natasha permits herself a small smile.

“Perhaps that was an indication, even then….”

”An indication of what?”

“Your future disloyalty. Your ease in changing sides. You turned your back on Mother Russia.” She sounds aggrieved by that. Natasha is indifferent to the accusation. Clearly, governments come and go. Natasha’s attachment to her homeland remains. She doesn’t need to actually live there to be Russian. Being older, though, Asp would have come of age under the Soviet regime, absolute totalitarianism. How old is she now, her late fifties? A few years older than Turlievsky, still mourning a way of life that ceased almost thirty years ago….

It’s difficult to say whether she’s beginning to look her age, the lighting on the street is half-hearted at best, but Asp is still lean and fit. Still, being physically agile and being mentally agile aren’t the same thing at all. How can she use that against her, Natasha wonders.

It’s a shame she gave Bucky her bag. It’s too bad she didn’t tuck her anesthetic atomizer into her cleavage or her garter. Because it looks like she’s going to have to fight Asp, one-on-one and an edge would be helpful. Natasha stretches, taking a few steps to one side, then the other. Asp has been leading with her right consistently, whether she’s doing it consciously or not. She may be trying to herd Natasha into a trap, to back her against the vehicle, to get her to stumble on the curb…or she’s doing what’s working in the past, against less wary opponents.

Asp darts forward, lashing out with a kick aimed at Natasha’s knees. Natasha skips to Asp’s left. The older woman is a little slower than she might be in turning to face her. Problems with peripheral vision? An old injury on that side? Or a trap--there’s always that possibility.

“Really, Asp--is this necessary? We could go get a coffee and talk about old times.”

“I don’t drink with traitors,” Asp snorts. “You’re not who I was looking for tonight, but you’ll do.”

“I’m wounded,” Natasha responds, blocking a strike targeting her solar plexus and returning a vicious little shoulder pinch Bucky’s shown her--maybe trying to fight one-handed will quell Asp’s fury. Left-handed at that--she’s been leading with her right, and now she can barely use it. _I’ll have to thank Bucky when I see him again…._ “Who were you after, James Bond?”

“Elitist capitalist nonsense!”

Luckily they’re on a quiet side street--there’s no traffic--and no one to notice two women circling and trying to incapacitate one another. Asp has the advantage of ballet flats--Natasha’s heels aren’t what she’d’ve chosen if she’d known things were going to get this busy. They’re both wearing little black dresses, which might be amusing if the rest of the situation wasn’t fairly serious. _Who wore it better?_ she thinks, and has to fight the urge to giggle.

The next kick directed at her is slow enough that Natasha catches Asp’s ankle and tips her onto her silk-clad behind. The woman hisses…like a snake. It would be easy enough to finish her off, but that’s such a waste; however, it’s soon apparent that Asp means to do more than teach her a lesson. She’s ready to kill. 

Natasha laments the necessity, but it looks as if this is a situation of kill-or-be-killed. One final attempt to defer bloodshed-- “You don’t have to do this. You said it yourself, I’m not your assignment.”

“I owe it to our Motherland,” Asp says piously.

Fine. Natasha considers that she’s done due diligence, she’s _tried_ to sway Asp from her course. There’s nothing left to do but the inevitable.

First, get in closer. Natasha crowds her on her right side, which she’s now favoring because of the shoulder pinch. Yes, she’s definitely off-balance on her left side….

Next rattle her. “You’re stuck in the past, really--do you have a hammer and sickle tattooed on your ass, or what?”

Finally, go in for the kill. As Asp gapes at her, open-mouthed at the insult, Natasha’s hand lashes out with pinpoint precision. Anyone as entrenched in the so-called good old days is almost guaranteed to have an old-fashioned, standard-issue poison-filled tooth…she aims for that spot.

Bone crunches; Asp’s jawbone shatters, and the deadly dentistry does its work.

For a moment, she’s still, regarding Natasha with disbelief. Then she collapses to the pavement, a puppet whose strings have been cut. She convulses briefly and goes still. Sighing, Natasha puts her behind the wheel of her car and walks away.

_Damn it, I hope Vassilia Turlievsky is worth this._

 

Half a mile away, her partner, tasked with getting the whistle-blower to safety, has problems of his own, namely physics. 

Bucky succeeds in reaching the roof of the American embassy’s annex, but there’s no give in the doubled-up zip-line. It brings him up short--he can’t land on all fours--and roof is pitched steeply enough that he starts sliding backward down the slates. His boot snags on the gutter, and he manages to crouch, working the loop of zip-line off, wrapping it around his left wrist.

Positioning himself so that he’s sitting with his heels braced against the gutter, he looks across to the platform. “Okay, loop my belt around the zip-line. Remember, the buckle--”

Behind Vassilia, the door to the roof slams open. “I told you I heard someone up here!” a man bellows.

In her anxiety to elude them, Vassilia snugs the belt around the cable and throws herself off the roof. Naturally, in her haste, she neglects to position the buckle correctly. She slides down the line toward Bucky, who leans back, keeping as much tension as he can on the line, praying he’s not going to be dragged off the roof, that the slim cable won’t saw through the leather of the flimsy dress belt….

There’s too much tension on the line for the goons on the other end to untie it, although one of them pulls out a boot-knife, clearly intending to cut the line. 

Vassilia has halted, her progress stalled about ten feet away from the roof…there’s enough slack in the line to counter the angle of descent. Desperately, he works the loop from around his wrist and starts to reel her in like a piece of clothing on his ma’s pulley-operated clothesline.

The line has almost sawed through the belt…Bucky can feel the cable vibrating from the man hacking at it with his knife. “Take my hand!” he tells her.

She’s reaching toward him when the belt gives way. Bucky lunges forward, grabs her wrist with his right hand. Throws himself back, pulling her on top of him. The gutter is starting to buckle as he digs his heels in. 

Part of the problem is renewed weight on the cable--one of the idiots looks like he’s about to try to cross over…apparently he doesn’t realize the only thing holding the line up is Bucky, who promptly releases it. The length of zip-line snakes downward, and the dumbass teeters on the edge of the platform, goes over the side and probably tears the hell out of his hands on the cable, trying to slow his abrupt descent. 

His friend, who’s clearly as clueless as he is, is hollering something about theft and police--does he really think they were stealing from the store? And escaping over the rooftops to avoid getting caught? Wow. It takes a special kind of stupid….

Scare him off…there’s enough distance between them that the man can’t be sure what he’s holding. Bucky triggers another one of his prosthetic’s accessories, a laser-pointer built into his index finger. Aims it at the man on the far roof--the guy sees the red dot on his chest and flees. The one on the ground is dragging himself toward the front of the store, but he’s on his feet. Lucky guy.

Vassilia breathes deeply, holding very still, not panicking. “We made it,” he says, trying to make it sound like a done deal, although there’s still the matter of getting to the other side of the roof, where they can attract attention from the right people.

“Tell me that when we’re inside drinking tea, Jimmie,” she replies. 

The zip-line would’ve come in handy, as would his belt. Racking his brains, the only thing Bucky has to loop around that vent is his tie.

It’s tricky, but he manages to hike his way up the roof, Vassilia hanging on to his waistband--he’ll be lucky if she doesn’t pants him…finally they make it to the peak of the roof. And apparently they’ve already attracted attention, because there are armed guards on all the line-of-sight balconies.

“This wasn’t the plan,” he says conversationally to Vassilia. “Follow my lead.”

He puts up his hands and announces that he’s here to see Phil Coulson or his liaison, Richard Richards. (‘Liaison’ being the polite term for ‘spook’--Richards is a strait-laced CIA clone, but he’s in on this caper for reasons known only to people way above Bucky’s pay-grade.) After some muttering, a ladder appears against the edge of the roof nearest them, and all they have to do is inch carefully down the roof to it and descend.

“See,” Bucky says to Vassilia when they get to the ground, Richards standing there and glowering. “Told you everything would work out okay.”

 

By the time Natasha returns to the embassy, it’s almost daybreak. After two more skirmishes and a car chase that took her halfway across the city, she’s tired and hungry, her hair is a mess and her manicure is trashed. It’s been a long damn night.

The first thing she does is to go looking for Coulson. She finds him watching through a two-way mirror as Bucky carries on an animated conversation with Turlievsky. Richards is there, too--sporting a flamboyant black eye. ”What the hell happened to him?” she asks Coulson, not particularly caring that Richards is standing right there.

“Your partner. He didn’t approve of Mr. Richards’s methods in questioning Ms. Turlievsky.”

Richards mumbles something under his breath that sounds like, “Stubborn old bitch.”

“So he took over. We’ve been recording it--she’s been extremely forthcoming. She has names and dates and who’s connected to who and how. Years-- _decades_ of it.”

Through the glass, Bucky and Turlievsky are sitting at a table in one of the smaller conference rooms. They’re drinking tea in glasses, Russian-style, and the remains of a meal are evident. 

“How did they turn Poliakov?” he’s asking.

“His mistress. Her step-brother was in the Bulgarian secret police…she copied some documents he brought along while they had a tryst. Once her brother had those, he had leverage. Poliakov knew he’d better cooperate, because if Nemerov found out--”

“Ivan Nemerov? Tall, dark hair, high forehead, cracks his knuckles all the time?”

“How could you know that?” she asks in surprise. “Nemerov disappeared…it must have been thirty years ago!”

“Nearly--November, 1994.”

“When you would’ve been a schoolboy.”

Bucky avoids the question. “So Nemerov was Poliakov’s boss and would have had him killed. That would be an excellent motive to have him disappear. How many people are aware of Poliakov’s divided loyalties? How many people has he turned, that you know of?”

Clearly, he has the matter under control. Turlievsky is singing like the proverbial canary. From the sound of it, her information was worth all the aggravation of getting her. She turns to Coulson.

“I’m going to find some breakfast and a shower. Maybe even catch some sleep, if I’m lucky.”

The embassy dining room provides her with half a grapefruit and a poached egg on rye toast. Tea with lemon on the side. It isn’t much after her exertions of the night, but if she’s going to attempt to sleep, she’d rather not do it on a full stomach.

She’s toweling off after her shower when Bucky enters their room. She gets a better look at him--his shredded trousers weren’t apparent through the two-way mirror. Up close, his right palm is lacerated, probably from the zip-line, she surmises. There are dark smudges under his eyes from lack of sleep.

“Coulson wants us ready to leave in fifteen minutes,” he sighs. “Vassilia has given us a lot of good intel, and we’re needed for some crisis or other in New York.”

Fifteen minutes…she’s dismayed. “You need a shower,” she says.

“I know.”

“And breakfast.”

He shakes his head. “I ate a couple hours ago. We’ll be in New York by lunchtime.” He starts stripping off his ruined suit. More scrapes and bruises are revealed.

“Coffee, at least.”

“Nothing show of an espresso IV is going to keep me awake,” he yawns. “I’m planning to sleep during the flight, land in New York all refreshed and…” Another yawn. “…perky.” He goes into the en-suite bath and a moment later she hears the shower running.

The way he shakes his head after washing his hair always reminds Natasha of a big, wet dog. Except, if he was a dog, he’d be a Rottweiler, which is muscular like him, but short-coated. She smiles as she buttons up her blouse, trying to picture a Rottweiler with a mane of long dark hair. He’s practically sleep-walking…he dresses by rote, pulling on black jeans, black tee shirt, boots….

“What?” he asks, aware of her scrutiny.

“One thing I’ll say for your wardrobe, it’s color-coordinated.”

He stands up, shifts his weight and hugs her. Not one of his bear hugs, she’s relieved to note--she’s too tired for Bucky to be demonstrative. Just warm. Touching base. Being human, which feels good after a night of running around playing super spy.”You remember that shoulder-nerve pinch you showed me? It came in handy last night.”

“Good. You’re okay?”

“Do you remember an operative named Asp?”

“That one! My god, is she still around? I remember having to kick her ass back in the 70’s. We were in the same dance class, when they first taught me ballet.”

“I had no idea she went back that far.” Natasha isn’t sure how she feels about that; if Asp was training in the 1970’s, she must have been pushing sixty at least. It’s a shame that she hadn’t been able to shake off all that conditioning and have a life of her own as she aged. 

Bucky releases her. “I guess she’d be a few years older than Vassilia…I don’t know for sure. Those years are still a little scrambled. You saw her?”

“Briefly.” He doesn’t need to know everything--that there’s a little more red in her ledger this morning….

Mercifully, he doesn’t ask for details. For a guy who’s usually as subtle as a bull moose, sometimes he can be remarkably perceptive.

He grabs his go-bag and hers. “She never did like me. Partly, I think, because she knew I was American. Partly because she resented how well I danced. She started as a child in a state-run school and was recruited a few years later, so by the time I met her, she was fourteen or so and I was around twenty-five.”

“Yes, she gave me shit about betraying Russia.” 

“I’m not surprised. She despised me for learning quickly…muscle memory, I guess. I used to love to go swing dancing before the war. But I started Irish dancing…I don’t even remember learning, that’s how young I was. There was always dancing at family parties, so I always danced.” He smiles wistfully. “Well, let’s get going before Coulson leaves us behind.”

“He won’t.”

He doesn’t. The Quinjet takes off, headed for home and whatever crisis awaits them next. Bucky is asleep before they even clear Romanian airspace. It takes longer for Natasha to find repose, but eventually, she also slumbers. There are dark alleyways in her dreams.

When she wakes up, Bucky is lounging on a banquette munching on a protein bar--his third, if the crumpled wrappers on the table are any indication. He looks up from a game he’s playing on his tablet. “How’d you sleep? We’re about an hour out.”

Natasha stretches, hoping there’s coffee. “I needed that.”

“You and me both. Hey, Tasha--you know, you were right. That was fun!”

“Bucky, you have a really strange idea of fun.”

 

…

**Author's Note:**

> Post-credits headcanon:
> 
> Communiques intercepted from the Russian embassy show that Asp was mistakenly identified as the 'French' woman who assaulted the embassy personnel. It is thought that she suicided rather than admit to admitting to her 'mistake'.
> 
> Further reports indicate that Vassilia Turlievsky is believed to have escaped from the embassy unaided after knocking out a guard and walking out amid the chaos of an outbreak of food poisoning that struck during an embassy dinner. She returned to her post and occasionally receives visits from "Jimmy", to whom she passes along any new information that comes her way.
> 
> Natasha regrets the necessity for Asp's death. Thinking about it, she can't even consider it a mercy killing, because she's sure when her time comes, she wouldn't regard it that way, either.
> 
> Other special features of Bucky's arm include a two-terabyte hard-drive, a small compartment able to conceal items from airport x-rays and a screwdriver attachment located in his middle finger.
> 
> ...


End file.
